Aug 2026· International Journal of Bilingualism· 0 citations· 12 references
Abstract
This study investigates morphological code-mixing, the combination of morphemes from two languages within a single word, in the spontaneous speech of young German–English bilingual children. Following a usage-based perspective, the study asks whether children’s morphological code-mixing shows systematic patterns and whether these patterns reflect properties of the linguistic input they receive.
The analysis is based on longitudinal corpus data from three German–English simultaneous bilingual children aged 2 to 3 years. All children were raised in Germany in families following a one-parent–one-language approach, but their input conditions differed in the relative frequency and distribution of German and English. Utterances were coded for language type and analyzed for instances of morphological code-mixing.
Across the three corpora, 696 instances of morphological code-mixing were identified. Each mixed form was coded for type of mixing, part of speech, language of stems and affixes, and grammatical categories realized in inflectional mixing. Quantitative comparisons were conducted across children to examine distributional patterns and effects of differing input conditions.
Morphological code-mixing appeared in fewer than 2% of utterances but was produced by all children. Individual differences emerged in both frequency and types of mixes. Inflectional mixing was the most common pattern, especially German inflectional morphemes attached to English stems. Children with more balanced or shifting input conditions also produced German stems with English inflectional markers. Mixed compounds occurred in both German–English and English–German configurations. These patterns mirrored the children’s input distributions and developmental shifts in language proficiency.
The results support a usage-based account in which morphological code-mixing arises from entrenched morphological frames and analogical extension rather than violations of grammatical constraints.
The study shows that morphological code-mixing in early bilingual development is systematic, input-sensitive, and shaped by children’s experience with partially schematic constructions across their two languages.
Multilingualism exists on a wide spectrum, and assessing an individual’s linguistic background and predicting language outcomes is challenging. To evaluate the predictive value of more precise language background questionnaires (LBQs) (e.g., Byers-Heinlein et al., 2020) we investigate acoustic-phonetic outcomes in young simultaneous bilinguals and link these to their backgrounds assessed through our detailed LBQ (cf. Rinker et al., 2017). We analyze elicited productions of (study 1) Russian vowels /i/ and /ɨ/ by 8- to 13-year-old Russian–English bilinguals, and (study 2) productions of voicing by 3- to 6-year-old German–Italian bilinguals. Both studies show differences in the realization of acoustic-phonetic cues of bilingual versus monolingual children. This may be indicative of motoric complexity involved in producing the formant-frequency height/movement of Russian /i/ or prevoicing; and/or can be interpreted as crosslinguistic sound-category interference from the majority/societal language (English; German) to the minority/heritage-language (Russian; Italian). Importantly, we find effects even in simultaneous bilinguals with daily heritage-language use and at least one native heritage-language parent. We argue that precise assessment of bilinguals’ ongoing language use can serve as a predictor for acoustic-phonetic outcomes, and will discuss possibilities for further modernization and standardization of LBQs, specifically in terms of (multi)media use, motivation, and clinical settings.
Evgeniya Maryutina, Theresa Bloder, Genevieve Medina et al.· Journal of the Acoustical So...· 0 citations
Introduction: Multilingual speakers frequently report that operating in a different language involves more than a change in grammatical system. The phenomenon at issue is linguistic frame switching (LFS): the involuntary reorganisation of cognitive, emotional, and identity-relevant schemas when a multilingual speaker moves between languages. This study investigated whether German–English bilinguals exhibit systematic language-dependent differences in self-perception and narrative content.
Materials and methods: This report presents findings from an original mixed-methods study of 27 German–English bi- and multilinguals, combining self-report questionnaire data with computational text analysis (linguistic inquiry and word count, LIWC) of matched narrative pairs elicited by identical picture prompts in both languages at a six-week interval.
Results: Approximately 78% of the participants reported feeling distinctly different when using their respective languages (21 of 27; χ2(1) = 8.33, p = 0.004). LIWC analysis revealed systematic cross-linguistic divergences: German narratives were consistently richer in cognitive processing, occupation-related content, and achievement themes; English narratives were higher in social process language. At the individual level, the contrasts were sometimes dramatic—the same person, the same picture, but two narratives that read as if written by different authors.
Conclusions: It is argued that these patterns cannot be explained by code-switching or translation equivalence effects alone. LFS, the present report suggests, has largely untapped implications for how neuroscience conceptualises the brain–mind–environment relationship. These findings are exploratory and subject to important limitations: the sample was small (N = 27) and self-selected, language proficiency was self-rated rather than objectively measured, and no monolingual control group was included.
Judith Zangerle· Academia Neuroscience and Br...· 0 citations
Adult and young bilinguals co-activate their languages to different degrees, even in entirely monolingual tasks. However, many studies use translation pairs with high phonological overlap (e.g., the English-GERMAN: "milk"-"MILCH"), making it difficult to discern the origin of the co-activation. This study examined language co-activation in Catalan-Spanish bilingual toddlers using words with minimal phonological overlap across translations. Thirty Catalan-Spanish bilingual three-year-olds (N = 30; Mage = 36.38 months, range = 35.57-37.43) participated in a visual word paradigm conducted entirely in Catalan, searching for an absent target named in Catalan (e.g., "apple" in Catalan: "poma," Spanish: "MANZANA") among images with labels that shared the initial phoneme across languages or were unrelated. The design included three types of images: (a) direct phonologically related (e.g., Spanish "PATO" for "duck"), (b) indirect phonologically related (e.g., Catalan "mitjó" for "sock"), and (c) unrelated (e.g., "brush," "sandwich"). If bilingual toddlers co-activate languages, they should look more at phonologically related than unrelated images due to shared phonological onsets. The results supported the hypotheses and provided solid evidence that young bilinguals co-activate phonologically related words in their familiar languages. Moreover, contrasting direct and indirect (translation-mediated) competitors showed that language co-activation unfolds dynamically, with timing shaped by the number of links involved.
Daniela S. Avila-Varela, Nuria Sebastian-Galles· Developmental Science· 0 citations
We explore how Spanish gender features are processed by English–Spanish bilingual children from two contact zones (Sotogrande, Spain, and Gibraltar, United Kingdom), divided into two dominance groups. The children come from two schools in which both languages are spoken, while English is the language of instruction. We present offline and online processing data involving linguistic code-switching between subjects and adjectives (Adj) in copulative constructions (the window es is roja red). Two issues are targeted to explore the mental representation that bilinguals have when their two languages are simultaneously activated. (i) The directionality of the switch provides information as to whether or not having to value gender features should result in a more economical representation. (ii) The gender agreement mechanisms that could be enforced when a Spanish adjective switch is processed provide information as to the importance that gender feature valuation has for bilinguals. Data show that no differences appear across the two child groups, which suggests that dominance does not reflect the similar representation that the two bilingual groups seem to have. The preference for English Adj switches and for gender matching Spanish Adj switches is linked to the properties of the two languages involved in the switch and to the hierarchy of processing difficulties.
Recently, contact linguistics has become increasingly interested in multiword units. At the same time, the code-copying framework (CCF) includes the notion of mixed copies (MCs) that are in-between global copies (‘borrowing’) and selective copies (‘structural change’) and illustrate the transition between the lexicon and grammar. The research question is: What types of MCs occur in English-Estonian bilingual speech?
The data were transcribed, and MCs identified, annotated, and classified according to their structure. English items were searched for in Estonian dictionaries to establish their Estonian equivalents or conventionalization of such items. The frequencies of MCs and their Estonian equivalents were also searched on Google to determine whether the MCs occur outside the corpus.
Three datasets were analysed: written texts from 44 blogs (385,124 tokens), spoken data from 10 vlogs (117,555 tokens), and 8 podcasts (77,277 tokens). Quantitative analyses of the various MC types were conducted, followed by a qualitative analysis of representative examples.
Compound nouns constitute the majority of MCs, followed by idioms, phrasal compounds, and a small number of compound verbs. No frame-changing MCs (i.e., MCs resulting in grammatical change) were attested. Since compound nouns and analytic verbs occur in both languages, structural similarity may be a facilitating factor in copying.
The notion of MCs is not widely used. Research typically focuses on particular types of items (e.g., compound nouns or verbs); here, however, the question is reversed: which types of items yield MCs?
It was established that the proportion of MCs in the data is comparable to that of selective copies. Within MCs, the globally copied element renders the remaining part more specific, highlighting the importance of meaning in contact-induced language change. MCs are also present on the Estonian internet and, in some cases, outnumber their Estonian equivalents, if such equivalents exist.
A. Verschik, H. Kask· International Journal of Bil...· 0 citations
This study examines linguistic interference from Spanish to French in the written productions of fifth-semester students enrolled in the Foreign Languages Program at the University of Cartagena. The research aimed to identify and categorize the most common instances of cross-linguistic influence present in learners' written responses. A mixed-methods design with a qualitative emphasis was adopted. Data were collected through a structured written production test consisting of guided writing tasks, sentence translation, sentence ordering, and interpretation activities. The analysis focused on identifying and classifying instances of interference according to four linguistic domains: morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The findings revealed that morphological interference was the most frequent category, particularly in orthography, grammatical gender, and lexical borrowing. Syntactic and semantic interferences were also recurrent, while pragmatic interference appeared less frequently. The results suggest that the typological proximity between Spanish and French facilitates learning while simultaneously generating transfer-related difficulties. The study highlights the importance of explicitly addressing differences between language during instruction in order to create linguistic awareness and to reduce negative transfer and improve learners' written production.
Gabriel Sabatini Tamayo, Liz Chaireth De Avila Pacheco, Camilo Andrés Camilo Andrés· International Journal of Lan...· 0 citations
